M86HC11 & Other MCU's

[kilroy]

m86hc11

Hi to everyobody
I'm electricty-electronics eng. student and yesterday ı entered to my first microproccessors & microcontrollers lesson.
until yesterday I've tried to learn PIC
our lecturer said something and my mind is confused
he said " we will learn M68HC11 because it's useful for professional usage. For example the latest model of Ford Focus include 26 of M68HC11. I don't offer you to learn PIC. You just see it in some cheap toys."

Do you agree with him?
please help me because it will determine our future ( I' planning to specialize about embedded systems)

 

[the tran]

IMHO the choice of MCU is more personal experience. Perhaps your teacher chose MC68HC11 because he has more experience with it, resoures availability at hand, support from manufacture... etc (and he might hold some of motorola stocks as well, ;-D). But if you are familiar with PIC then switch to motorola is no big deal. The main thing is understanding the architecture of each one. Once you got that everything else is just the matter of playing with it.

 

[VVV]

Every micro has its advantages and drawback, but I would not have ventured to say the PIC's are used only in toys or toy-like products.

I use PIC's at work, in industrial equipment. The great advantage I see with PIC's is the large number of available devices, which makes life easier when you just need a device with only a few more features.

PIC's are RISC machines, fast and code-efficient. Part of their speed is due to their being pipelined. On-board reset, brownout detectors, flexible oscillators (including internal RC), independent watchdog timer, high I/O drive capability, 10-bit A/D's, FLASH are some of the features. (I am not saying these features are not available on other micros, just showing they are not just meant for "toys").

Among the drawbacks: perhaps the fairly limited RAM, the limiting hardware stack (sometimes only 2-deep), a not-too-great interrupt system, some limitations due to program memory paging and RAM banking.

Development tools are available free from Microchip, including a simulator. Not exceptional, but downloadable for FREE.

The only way to compare micros is to actually try to use (or imagine) them in a specific application and see how it can be done with one or the other, including the code.

 

[sc/mp]

Hi Kilroy !

Your lecturer should say (IMHO):

-The 68HC11 WAS usefull for professionnal usage,
-Modern car may use 68HC16, 68HC12 and some lowcost 68HC908....
-I teach you 68HC11 because I didn't actualize my lessons and labs...
-Many 8 bits chips are good for professionnal usage : they come from Freescale, Microchip, Atmel , ST .........

Regards

PS : don't be too severe with him. You will certainly get still some good ideas and knowhow from him, and then play with todays and tomorrow chips !!

 

[jcding1980]

Hi kilroy,

I believe it does not really matter if you learn 68HC11 or Microchip PIC because both of them are coded using assembly language. During my degree course, I was also taught using 68HC11. But now I use PIC in my part-time job and I feel that both are quite the same and only differ in the assembly instruction sets. So just bear with him and learn all those tricks n tips in programming. (Eg. PWM, Capture, Interrupts n etc.).

Good luck!


regards

 

[hamidr_karami]

hi
you can refer to
**broken link removed**
and find useful information about mc68HC11 eb-board
bye